Last week, we heard Jesus say that he has given us a new commandment – to love one another just as he loved us. And, he said that everyone would know that we are disciples of Christ by showing love to one another.
Hearing commandments like this is always heart-warming, because we all know what it is like to love, and we all know what it is like when everyone gets along. It’s an idyllic scene. A beautiful picture we all love to imagine. Neighbors love neighbors and take care of each other. Cats and dogs don’t fight. Lions and tigers don’t eat little animals, but play with them instead. And we feel wonderful and hopeful about this commandment to love one another… right up until someone does something mean, or does something without thinking that affects us badly. Or worse, they break an actual law. And then we get mad, we get all high and mighty, and we want to make sure that they are punished for their rudeness, their lack of respect.
Today, in our current Gospel, Jesus tells us that those who do love him will keep his word – that is, they will keep his commandments – and those who don’t love him won’t keep his commandments.
Jesus is saying is that loving God makes us want to keep his commandments, because we understand just how much God has loved us – you know “love one another as I have loved you.” And knowing how much God has loved us motivates us to respond to God’s love with the desire to do God’s will – to keep God’s commandments.
What often happens, though, because we are human, is that we think that simply keeping the commandments proves that we love God. And so we make sure that we keep the laws. We focus on what is right, and what is wrong; we focus on what is good, and what is evil; we focus on what is allowable, and what is despicable. And anyone who fails to live up to it gets a swift kick in the pants. The problem with this very natural and human way of looking at things is that when we do that, then the Law becomes more important than loving God. We separate the Law of God from the person of God. And when that happens, we end up with rules and regulations, and with requirements and hoops for people to jump through in order to feel that they qualify. But what’s worse is that we usually then demand that other people live up to our regulations. That is, our love of the Law has become more important than anything else, and we begin to find ways to make sure people keep God’s commandments. Either by enacting strict moral guidelines, or by voting in actual laws to keep people in line with our ideas.
During the Reformation period, John Calvin came to Geneva, Switzerland, and established something called the Consistory – a body of pastors and elders that aimed to enforce religious and moral discipline by influencing the elected officials of the city. This group of pastors put into effect laws and reforms that would create a society where God’s Word was applied to all aspects of life. Geneva became so well known for its strict moral codes and the efforts to regulate everything according to the Law of God, and earned the nickname, “The Protestant Rome.” The trouble is that this moral code and this legislating of God’s commandments produced a very thin line of what was acceptable and what was not acceptable – and naturally, as is always the case, the people who said what was acceptable were those in power.
Before this group of pastors came to a position of influence in Geneva, for a period spanning about 40 years, only about a dozen people had been killed for the crime of witchcraft, and then the punishment was usually a financial fine, or exile from the city. After the establishment of this body of influential pastors came to Geneva, over 500 people, even those who were only just accused of being witches, were burned at the stake in a matter of only 2 years. And not just witches, but others too. Those engaged in other sins – adulterers, drunkards, thieves, and you name it – all of them got harsh public sentences for failing to live up to God’s commandments, whether it be prison, torture, exile, or even death by burning.
What started off as a movement to reform the Catholic Church – a church the reformers accused of using laws to dominate people – this movement – turned itself into an institution that dominated people. That punished people. That tortured people. That murdered people. All for failing to keep God’s commandments. Because, after all, keeping God’s commandments proves that we love God, right?
Laws, and forcing people to keep the laws that we say are important will never teach them to love God. Nor will it bring about a just and moral society. Because demanding these things of other people is exerting power over them, and removing their freedoms; it is domination. And, as the late Pope Francis once said, “where there is domination, there is abuse.”
Domination over others sets us up to abuse their free will and freedoms, because it creates the idea that we can judge who is righteous in God’s eyes. If our idea of God’s commandments allows us to love some people less than others, because they are failing to live up to the commandments that we have demanded, then we are not worshipping God. We are worshipping an idol. An idol that makes God out to be our personal police force. It is focusing on the right and the wrong, the good and the bad, all of which is shaped by how we view the world. It is the lazy way of religion, because it is far easier than loving people. Especially loving people just as they are – filthy, rotten, loud, obnoxious, stupid, narcissistic, wishy-washy, or just plain mean. After all, if we can just point to a big list of dos and don’ts and tell people that they have failed, isn’t that a lot easier than offering a listening ear, expressing compassion, or opening up our hearts and minds with empathy?
That’s rhetorical, by the way. I hope we all know the answer.
Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. He was focusing on the relationship we have with God, and not on the commandments. It is less about picking and choosing laws to follow that will prove how much we or others love God, but about pushing in towards a relationship with the creator of all things. It’s about understanding the sacrifice that Christ made for each of us, and feeling the love and acceptance that we have received from that sacrifice. Jesus is saying, “Spend time with me, learn about me, get to know me, so that you may know how much I love you. And then, you too can understand love, and you too will begin to love one another, just as I have loved you.”
To John, the author of this Gospel we read today, this idea of being able to love stemming from a relationship with God and understanding God’s love is so important that in his first letter, he says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” That is, in order to know how to love one another, we must first know God. And when we fail to love one another, then that is our proof that we do not love God.
No matter how many laws we abide by. No matter how many commandments we live up to. If we don’t have any love, and if we do not love God, then we are just obnoxious noise-makers, like fireworks on the Fourth of July and toot-horns at a New Year’s party.
Human nature, of course, again comes back to bite us in the butt, and we all will sing our own praises about how much we love. How loving we are. How much we love love love. I can tell you as your priest, standing up here, that this is hard to make sound true – for any of us. Love is a verb. It is a command, and there are people I really don’t like. You know, like I’d probably shrug if they wound up in a bad accident. Or worse, I might find my heart oddly warmed by the news that they tripped and fell into an empty coffin. … But … I am required to love them, and I do my best to behave in a loving manner, even though sometimes I do it while gritting my teeth. Because Love is an active verb. Jesus said we had to love even our enemies. It’s not a feeling, but a commandment.
The commandments of Jesus are not those things we love to pull out of Leviticus, or the Ten Commandments, or harvest a single sentence out of context in order to dominate other people. No. The commandments of Jesus are simple: Love God above all else, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Simple. Just not very easy to do. We have the lazy way out, by giving people a laundry list of dos and don’ts and claiming it is love without realizing this sort of thinking is a false idol that in no way represents God. And then we have the commandment to love one another as God loved us, and struggling hard to do exactly that, because people are difficult. And so is loving them like Jesus.
But this is the beauty of these commandments of Jesus. When we push toward God, when we build that relationship with God, when we draw near to God, God draws near to us, and we learn what it means to be loved. And then we learn to love ourselves just as God loved us. And when we have learned to love ourselves, then it becomes easier and easier to love others over time – even when they don’t behave according to the same laws and commandments we want them to.
St. Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, once said “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”
And this is the same promise that Jesus is giving in the Gospel today: “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” That is, we will find our rest, our peace, when God comes to live with us. And it will feel like the home we never knew we were missing.
That idea of a perfect world, this idyllic place where we magically love all of our neighbors, and where our neighbors all love us. Where we all get along and lions dance and play with baby lambs. That world can, and will exist, but it won’t come about by making demands and threats, and punishing people who don’t do as we want. Instead, in this life, it will come about when each of us learns to love God, and through that knowledge each of us learns to love ourselves, so that we can then learn to love our neighbors just as we love ourselves.
Those who keep my commandments will love me.
Or…
Those who love me will keep my commandments.
The difference is very subtle. But the results are worlds apart. In one, we make a home for ourselves, and have to live with it. And in the other, God comes and makes a home with us, and gives us peace.
Jesus said: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. … Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
[This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on May 25, 2025.]
